A reflection for my online class

I'm reaching the end of my online class on the Theory and Foundation of Education. One of our last assignments is a journal entry, so I thought I would post it here. We are given a few sentence starters and must finish those sentences with a paragraph or more about something we learned in class. This is our third go-round with the exercise and I probably have the same answers every time. I'm impressed with how smart my classmates are compared to me. I'm wondering about how it will feel to actually get paid for working, etc. Oh well, I'll give it one last try, and I hope I think of something new to write.

I am most impressed with how much there is to learn about education. We had a course in our MLIS program about learning theory, media and the curriculum. We focused there more strictly on library theorists and scholars, and what they had to say about teaching and learning in the library and on evidence-based practice. With this course we have covered so much more, and I feel that we have only nicked the surface on some very major topics.
I am wondering how long it will take my school's technology department to learn that the Internet is not our enemy, and that we can all learn by watching and creating videos, by listening and creating podcasts, and by reading and creating blogs and wikis. They are true tools of constructivist learning, and it will excite the students to be able to share their creations with more people than their teacher. Commenting and responding to comments about their posts will stretch their learning to higher levels, as they struggle to defend their posts, and contemplate those of their classmates.
I'm happy to have added new understandings about Behaviorism, Cognitivism and Constructivism, and how they are used in schools in general and the library in particular. With the comparison chart being repeated in each group's work, I was able to review and consider it, and to see the distinctions between Cognitivism and Constructivism. I remembered from Human Information Behavior class that Cognitivism saw the brain as a computer, and focused on how new learning materials are processed, just as a CPU processes information, but most of the theorists of the two schools are the same, and it was confusing to me. Working on this latest unit of study, and discussing the three topics separately has helped me understand how knowledge is not unique to the individual in Cognitivism like it is with Constructivism.
How can I tie this knowledge to what I do in my library? I'm always working on new lesson plans and projects for the kids I teach. It takes a long time to work out the plans, but I enjoy creating them myself, rather than finding already created plans on the net because when I create the plans, they can stem directly from the interests and needs of the children and teachers of my school. Today, while I have been working on homework, I am also mentally working on a lesson plan for second graders making puppets. I want them to think of what types of puppets we should have, how they can use them, what books and resources will they need to learn how to make puppets, what materials will they need, etc. There, I had to write that out.

A new school year begins

It's September, and it's hot at the Parkview School. But there is one place where you are always welcome to come cool down. If we have room for your class anywhere in the library, the reading area, the work tables, or in the computer area you can come with your class and read or work quietly.
So give us a call at ext. 1111, send a student down to ask about available space, and come spend some time with us. We're the library and we love to help people.

Join me on the Milltown Public Schools ning

Sorry to disappoint, but I'm only inviting you all to take a peek, not "join".
I created this project, which I hope will take our two schools by storm, to be a private site for Milltown teachers and aides and I guess administrators. I hope it will allow teachers to view and explore some web2.0 tools while learning more about educational topics
Iif you would like to visit, you can use my fake name/id that I used to create a second account for the how-to video. Sign in with the name bwscils and the password bwscils.
You will see that a ning site is basically a social networking site for a specific interest. Like a google or yahoo group, but on a pretty website on which you can throw a lot of tricks .
The site: milltownps.ning.com
also check out the school library blog that I just created:parkviewlibrary.blogspot.com
Click the links to see my school library site I made for multimedia.

Well, that's all, folks!
This email will self destruct in five, four, three, two

Youch! Mixed TV metaphors. Sorry about that Chief.
Can you tell I'm a little giddy to have finished the project?

Video Games Live concert from YouTube

Just in time for our game class this video shows what I spent about 10 years of my life doing.
And bravo Steven Berlin Johnson! The chapter on games from your book Everything Bad Is Good For You is great.

Click here to see this video on the YouTube page.

DailyStrength.org

Just to let you all know that social networking has spread beyond the library and education realms, my friend has told me about a site that she has really become excited about. From their own welcome message:

DailyStrength.org is the largest, most comprehensive health network of people sharing their advice, treatment experiences, and support. Keep a wellness journal, read members’ stories, and chat with new friends. Come in and explore!

Users can join any of 500 different groups that offer mutual support for different illnesses and conditions. Members send each other cute animated hugs and virtual bouquets. Dealing with an illness or a serious diagnosis is hard, and ignorance of the condition is frightening. Support groups have always been a way to improve patients mood, attitude, and even health, but are usually only held about once a month.
Yes, Internet discussion lists have been around for more than 10 years, but check out this site. it is a more integrated, easy to use and spiffy looking Web2.o application.

Social Networking on myspace.com

We used our lab tonight to create and join yahoo and google groups, and to create our own myspace account, since it is a new thing that some libraries are getting into. (trying to meet the teen users in the place where they will be)

If you want to discuss libraries in Web2.0, and have any suggestions of using new technologies in libraries or schools, leave a comment here on on my MySpace.

Jacob's big break on youtube

click here if the above link doesn't work.

You may want to learn this!

Watch my son Jacob teach how to tie a sheet bend

Click To Play

Posting the Tehya video from Blip.tv

Click To Play

Clicking the picture or the link will play the video of my young great-niece. If that doesn't work, you should be able to right click and download the file to play it.
Right Click to Save

Meet my great- niece Tehya

or click here

Click To Play

Right Click to Save

Le Sites de Paris

Make an origami wallet

This is the video I made for our multimedia class. If you look quick, you can see my dog Pepper.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXaiX70hZCo

Social Networking

Next week our class will be discussing and exploring social networks. Having three kids in the high school to college age range, I am a witness to the use of these sites (myspace and facebook) rather than a user. I do have a xanga account(that I don't update often), but to me its more like a straight blog than a social network. Everyone else in the family migrated to the other sites, and they told me that I'm too old to be there. I can respect their wishes for- can you call it privacy?
Xanga was great when we were all active, though, so I can see why the kids all like being in a social network. It made me feel more connected to all of my nieces and nephews, and I could send them little messages of love or congratulations by responding to their posts. When they bragged about drinking, or loving songs with explicit lyrics, the elders among us would offer some gentle advice. Teens never appreciate that advice, and since their friends were all getting new myspace accounts, they stopped posting in xanga.
There's an interesting young researcher, Danah Boyd, who has been studying teens' use of social network sites, and my real reason for this whole blog post is to recommend that you check out her website, blog and presentations.

Pine tree shadows on SCILS building
Originally uploaded by bwscils598s07

SCILS from College Ave.
Originally uploaded by bwscils598s07

Scenes from SCILS

Last night we took a few minutes to shoot some photos around SCILS, so we could get practice using all the features of flickr.com. The students in our class formed a "group" within flickr, and we posted some of our favorite shots here. (group scils598s07-scils snaps)
Within my own flickr collection, I used the organize tools to create a set of my own SCILS pictures.
If you want to use flickr for free, you cannot upload more than 100MB of images per calendar month, have more than three sets of photos, nor display more than 200 images at any time. The Pro account costs $24.95, but allows unlilimited uploads, photos displayed, and sets. My son Tom has the pro account, and it has helped him develop his talents as a photographer and a blogging journalist

A Photo from the Rutgers Gardens

I don't know what kind of flowers these are. I cropped and edited the photo with Picnik.com .

We're learning in our Social Software Literacy Class about many great free web tools. Our theme this week was "images".

Check out more of my photos on Flickr.com .

A Matter of Taste

After some review, I've decided that choosing between Shelfari and LibraryThing is a personal choice that depends on what the user wants to do with the site. Both will record the books you read, books you own, and or books you intend to read. Both allow for joining or forming social groups around your reading tastes, and allow easy communication among friends or groups.

If you are a librarian, and want to catalog your personal collection like you do at work, Librarything seems more equipped to carefully catalog books using Library of Congress classifications. Your collection records can resemble like real library records. I would even think that it could work for small business or organization libraries, and Shelfari does not seem equipped to handle those tasks.

On the other hand, for the casual user, Shelfari feels easier to use and the display is less cluttered. I like the way the books look on the shelf, like real books rather than cover pictures. Yes, its a cheap trick of taking the cover shot and adding a set image to make it look like a book, but I like it. The discussion also doesn't take the standard discussion list display format.
I did find it difficult to search for a group that showed up once when I clicked groups. It was there as recently updated, and then when I tried to search for it, the search wouldn't search for anything but the entire group name-School library media specialists had to be the entire name. That was a pain. I found it and joined by browsing the list alphabetically, but bad search Shelfari. They could probably do better with a Google search this site feature.

I'm going to continue to play with both sites, I joined Shelfari last night as Bamboo- with the thought of using it for discussing books popular in my school library.

Reading The Social Life of Information chapter 8

I just finished reading another chapter of John Seely Brown's The Social Life of Information and I've recorded a few of my thoughts.

Click To Play

Doing a little more reading about Brown, since the book is pretty old, I was wondering if I could find out what are his thoughts on all this in 2007. After hours of berry picking, hunting for one thing, but finding lots of other interesting "berries", I've learned about another new web phenomenon. Ning. Create your own social network. It could be very useful for us in our application of our knowledge on the job.

What the heck is crowdsourcing?

I've found some more out about crowdsourcing, and I experienced it in person. It is an example of using the social Web in innovative ways. How did I learn the answer? Wikipedia.

Crowdsourcing means that a person or organization tries to get a solution to a problem by publicizing the question and asking the public for help. In the past, they would hire someone to do the job, fix the problem, find a solution. By crowdsourcing, this now usually takes place on the Internet, and sometimes includes large prizes for the answers. Netflix has an offer of $1,000,000 for a better movie rating system, Proctor & Gamble have thousands of scientists working out problems on a website Innocentive.com.

Brian Lehrer interviewed Jeff Howe of Wired Magazine, who has been writing a series of articles on the subject, and they have publicized a project first to count and report the cars and SUV's on your block. Since they started that, now they've issued a further challenge to compile the information on an interactive Google map.

At the Liberty Science Center's new communication exhibit, there are survey questions on computer touch screens asking about how the viewer gets his or her news, communicates with friends, etc. The history of the results are instantly updated and displayed in a visual graph.
The new communications exhibit will be great, right up library and information students alley, when they get all the bugs worked out. Some displays are still under construction. On the positive side, they let us in free precisely because of that fact.

Group 5 Wiki

Group 5, Daniel, Tina and I, have set up a wiki on pbwiki with instructions on how to find the paintings you seek on the National Gallery of Art (London) picture library website.
You can see our wiki if you click here or paste http://scils598group5.pbwiki.com in your browser.
the wiki is still a work in progress, if you don't see the search guide now, you will be 6 pm tonight!

Language of Social Software Literacy Hits the Air

This morning the talk on Brian Lehrer's show on WNYC used the language of Web 2.0 a few times. I was sleeping with the radio on, but woke up to the tail end of a discussion of "crowdsourcing" with Jeff Howe from Wired Magazine . It sounded a lot like twittering with a group of professionals.

Later, a letter read on the air explained why some listeners would have more trouble adjusting to the new technology because they were digital immigrants, not digital natives, like younger people.

Learning in theory and practice

Click the arrow to listen to a short statement of my thoughts about knowledge vs. information.

• the difference between the two
• how business practices misapply and underestimate knowledge
• how people really learn knowledge
  

Click To Play

My first podcast

Listen to this!

Click To Play

Digital Immigrants need TSL (Tech as a second language) classes

I was struck by something I read in Hala's Blog:

Some people are ready for the overload of information and have a clear vision of the influence of the Net; and some conservative people, who are not used to changes, are not ready for the amount of information available, which is growing gradually. Those people might suffer if we do not get them the right kind of training and that is the job of libraries.

This comment seems to relate directly to something I have witnessed in my town. Our local public library patrons have the ability to listen to downloaded audio books, and yet, only about four patrons a month are taking advantage of this service. Besides advertising the service on the website and handing out bookmarks, what can libraries do to increase the number of patrons borrowing audiobooks?

1. Hold classes to teach how to use the service.
2. Advertise these classes on the municipal TV channel.
3. Make sure that high school summer reading titles are always available.

Not all patrons are used to using new technologies, and their use will gradually increase with time; but libraries can speed the process along if we offer the training that users need.

The blog Pop Goes the Library has a young, hip attitude that I enjoy. I enjoy knowing what teens will be into, (even though I work with the younger "Dora the Explorer" crowd) and this blog has that feel.
As a whole, teens don't trust librarians, so, having librarians that teens will think are hip may just save us with the next generation.

In my first semester of library school I took a course "Human Information Behavior". My fellow RUSSL classmates can all remember that one. We had to get up and talk about the information seeking habits of some group or other, and I chose urban teenagers. The best research I could find was from a study by two Drexel Library Profs, Denise Agosto and Sandra Hughes-Hassell:

People, places, and questions: An investigation of the everyday life information-seeking behaviors of urban young adults
Library & Information Science Research, Volume 27, Issue 2, Spring 2005, Pages 141-163
Denise E. Agosto and Sandra Hughes-Hassell

They met with about 30 teens, had them keep track of where they met their everyday questions for a period of time, then sat with the teens in smaller groups to compare and rank results. With teens who were even teen leader homework help library volunteers, they overwhelmingly did not look to librarians to get information. Its a point to consider. We have to go a long way to meet teens halfway, and to gain their trust. Learning about reaching out via new technologies is cool in my book, maybe the teens will think so, too.

How does the information boom affect libraries?

This weekend our home was to read the first chapter of the book
Brown, J. S. & Duguid, P. The Social Life of Information. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press. (2002) available here.

Brown and Duguid argue that the modern glut of information will not break down society and its longstanding institutions because the support structure that keeps organizations intact are still strong and functioning. They point to examples like Walmart and Fed Ex, where centralization of control has increased the effectiveness of the business, and the large corporate mergers like MCI/Worldcom, AT&T/ everything( although I think AT&T is pretty weak, at least in stock prices) are just making the largest corporations larger.
You see, the theory was that if the individual could get all the info he needed on his own, there would be no need for institutions, and they would all break down. So far, this hasn't happened.
But it is what some people predict will happen to libraries; that libraries will not be necessary because everyone will know how to use Google.
Libraries, like those large corporations are learning that there is power in being larger. By combining resources, libraries can provide more and better services to their clients. Regional cooperatives and interlibrary loans can ensure that patrons have access to the resources of all libraries by combining their catalogs electronically. Library membership in ListenNJ.com
allows readers the ability to listen to their books on their computers.

Multi-tasking

I just listened to the podcast homework from the sirsi dynix institute ( I'll fix the name later) while shucking corn, and cooking enough different kinds of foods to please the varied palates of my extended family.
I'm not a "digital native", the term the speaker, Lee Raines, used for the under 25 crowd who grew up with the Internet and in some regards Web 2.0 technology, but I'm catching on.

Social Software Literacy

I've just created this blog for my summer class.
Feel free to follow along as 19 students and our brave teacher dive into the web tools that will help us all connect to library users in new and exciting ways.
Our class wiki